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Where Can I Find NT Kernel Programmers?

Posted by Cliff on from the avoiding-the-headhunters dept.

1010011010 asks: "We're developing a new distributed file system and need a Windows kernel programmer to start porting (from Linux) it to Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 2000. Universities tend to churn out Unix-skilled people, not NT people, and kernel programmers for any platform are a little hard to come by. It's difficult to find someone with experience writing NT device drivers. We don't want to use a recruiter -- we've had bad experiences with them, and they're expensive. We would rather pay a starting bonus than a headhunting fee. Any ideas? Any NT programmers?"

1 of 25 comments (clear)

  1. The truth about universities. by Some+guy+named+Chris · · Score: 3

    The argument i've heard is that "that kind of thing is for tech schools." Fine. Then what the hell should I learn in CS at a university? Windows is important in our world now, and it shouldn't be overlooked.

    Whoa, calm down.

    You simply do not understand how the American higher education system is set up. Universities do not exist to train you a specific set of skills, they prepare you for you future by teaching you how to learn. In a CS program, it is done using some arbitrary programming language and computer platform because those skills are just that, arbitrary.

    Imagine being in school 10 years ago, when DOS was hot, and they taught you all about memory segmentation, specific DOS system calls, how to program the CGI card, etc. You would be in the situation of having to learn an entire new skill set now anyway.

    That's why you have to take those physics classes, and calculus, etc, when you are in a university, because those classes teach you how to solve problems in the general case, and how to learn how to solve new ones you haven't been specifically taught how to solve.

    You want to know about Cisco routers and the Windows API, huh? That's fine. Personally, I want to be the person who obsoletes those technologies. As Dennis Ritchie said in the August, 1984 issue of the CACM,

    "The greatest danger to good computer science research today may be excessive relevance . . . [C]ommercial pressure . . . will divert the attention of the best thinkers from real innovation to exploitation of the current fad, from prospecting to mining a known lode"

    So, you are right. Tech schools are there to train you, while universities exist to educate you. If it's training you want, which is what it sounds like, either enroll in your local tech school or community college.

    Some guy named Chris